The Taste of Turkey

This is the article that I have been plotting in my head for quite a while. It says so much about my adaptation process to life in America over the last 14 years.

I had my first taste of turkey on my first Thanksgiving in the U.S. My father-in-law proudly baked a gigantic bird in the oven. The bird was prepared the day before and cooked in the over for quite a few hours. When it was finally done, below the thick layer of black skin, it was the steaming red and white meat of turkey. Two things I learned from my first Thanksgiving meal. One, the Americans do not feed their dogs bones and leftovers from the turkey. Dogs are fed on dog food only. And the second yet most important lesson is that turkey is tasteless. The meant is bland and tough. It tasted like nothing like the Chinese chicken. I did not particularly like it at all.

Turkey is just like so many other things in my new life in America, tasteless yet I have to force myself swallow it day after day simply because I did not know otherwise. About three years ago, I was invited to dinner around the holiday season. The friend baked a turkey which she purchased from the university. I loved it this time. It had a familiar flavor to the salty and smoky chicken I had enjoyed in China. I was appalled that it took me so long to discover there were more than one way to bake a turkey. The turkey drive was announced though the campus email before the holidays. I was too busy to read it. Or I simply ignored it since I didn’t have prepare a turkey as long as holidays would be spent at my in-laws.

The moral of the story is that I should always keep an open eye and open mind for a different approach when things are not working quite right. Never let assumptions and existing surroundings to define your mind and vision. There are bigger pictures out there if you allow yourself to venture out of your little bubble. However this is not the only moral I learned from the story. Over the years, my taste of food has changed slowly especially since I started to be more health conscious.  I never realized my dramatic change of taste until my parents started to live with me. I always complain about the salty and oily food they prepared for the family. So the second lesson I learned here is that never be too stubborn about anything unless it is about  fundamental moral issues. The world is always changing and we tend to be changed by the surroundings . This is why I can never allow myself to have a tattoo permanently marked my skin.